Eddie on the right track with fun-and-enjoyment mantra

Photo courtesy of Ali Nicol

Did you know that even though there are no vineyards in Hong Kong we do have a handful of winemakers living here? Apart from myself—although I don’t think I should really be counted since I don’t make wine for a living at the moment—there is Eddie McDougall, a Eurasian Hong Kong-born flying winemaker who makes his own wine in Australia using grapes from King Valley and the Pyrenees and is the owner of The Flying Winemaker, a wine store cum bar cum school in Lan Kwai Fong.

Eddie had a series of activities lined up for the launch of his latest wine recently. The wine was originally named Umami, but for technical reasons he could not register that name so chose to market it under his own name: Eddie McDougall. So don’t be confused when you see the name Umami in a much more prominent position than his own on the label.

At one of the launch events organised by the The Elements Club, we had four of Eddie's wines with a Chinese dinner. I particularly liked the Frederica’s Pinot Gris 2010. The wine was barrel-fermented in old barrels, lees-stirred and matured for eight months. The flavours are intense yet well-integrated. Its structure and relatively high alcohol of 13.8% make it a nice pairing with heavier seafood or stir-fried pork dishes (we had it with wok-fried prawns with Sichuan chilli sauce and deep-fried scallops coated with taro crust 川汁蝦球，荔茸帶子).

Little Pig Rosé 2010, using the nickname given him by his grandmother, has an attractive pale pink salmon colour. I was expecting a soft delicate wine but instead my first impression was of something savoury and structured. Eddie explained that the wine, from Merlot grapes, underwent cool temperature fermentation and was aged for 12 months, so no wonder it developed the characters that Eddie highly recommends be paired with Cantonese style barbecued pork (叉燒). A delicate rosé would not stand up to the pork's robust flavour.

Eddie’s wine philosophy is that wine should be fun and enjoyable and that good quality wine is not necessarily expensive and out of reach. I totally agree. Indeed this is what I would like to promote in Hong Kong—a wine culture that values quality over price, enjoyment over pretentiousness, and, above all, sharing over showing off. I would love to see that one day, hopefully in the not too distant future, it is the norm that consumers have their rice box dinner at home in front of the television with a glass of wine rather than a can of soft drink. I have been discussing this with a few people recently, including Eddie and Betsy from Northeast and I think they share the sentiment. I hope we can start to generate enough support from other like-minded people to make this happen. Let me know if you agree.

New Year Resolution

No doubt some of us still nursing New Year hangovers today have made a resolution to cut down on drinking. I would like to encourage an alternative, more positive stance—make a resolution to start really appreciating wine drinking and exploring the world of wine.

There are so many labels on the wine shelves, and this confuses a lot of people, so they usually retreat into buying just the regions, grape varieties and brands they are familiar with. If you are one of them, you’re missing out on a lot of fun. To begin discovering the wine world, the key hurdle we need to cross is to understand what we mean by ‘quality’ and how to judge it. So let’s take a look at that (and bear in mind that good quality wine exists at all price levels so it doesn’t need to break the bank).

Professionals judge wine quality by four criteria: balance, length, intensity and complexity (BLIC for short). Start with balance: the three components that form the backbone of white wine are acidity, alcohol and sweetness, with red wine having a fourth, tannin, which can be from either grape or wood. These components must be well integrated with the fruit and no one of them should jump out above the others. If you immediately feel the heat of alcohol in a wine, it is out of balance. Similarly, if all you can taste is wood or tannin, again it is out of balance. Some people shun German Riesling because of a perceived sweetness, but a good quality one will have enough acidity to support the sweetness and will not be cloying.

Length, the second criterion, is the pleasant aroma—not the drying tannin—that stays in the throat after you swallow. The longer you can feel the wine, the better quality it is. This after taste usually lasts from a good 4-6 seconds to well over 30 seconds. Some wine may be pleasant to drink but its aroma disappears as soon as you swallow: its length is short, indicating lesser quality.

Intensity is probably the most difficult criterion to understand. It is not about the intensity on the nose, but on the palate. Take a wine designed for ageing, like a Barolo. When young, such a wine may be closed (ie, you can’t smell anything) but you should still be able to feel the concentration and density on the palate. This, together with the length and the balance, is the clue that the wine has the potential to develop and open up later.

The final criterion, complexity, is about the group of aromas that you can taste. Fruit aromas include citrus, apple, floral, white fruit, yellow fruit, tropical fruit, red fruit and black fruit, and these can be complemented by secondary characters such as herbal, spicy, nutty, raisiny and vanilla. Someone may impress you by saying they can taste blackberries, blackcurrant, blueberries and black cherries in a wine. Well, just remember that those are all black fruits, so there’s really only one aroma class and therefore that wine is not complex! On the other hand, if you can feel black fruits, spices and vanilla, that’s already three categories of aroma and the wine is reasonably complex.

For me, balance is the most important element. A wine can be simple, with just some citrus and apple aromas and a 3-5 second aftertaste, but if it is balanced and costs less than HK$150/bottle, it is a good quality entry level wine. Some Chardonnays from Casablanca, Chile fit the bill. In contrast, some wines that cost $500-600 per bottle may exhibit four or five types of aroma and have a good length yet somehow the oak or alcohol stand out; they are not balanced and I would not consider them as good quality for what they cost.

Armed with this technique, you can begin to get out of the comfort zone and start exploring different wine regions and grape varieties and what styles of wine you like best. In fact, you don’t need to confine yourself to only one style of wine as there are different styles for different occasions and food pairing.

Hong Kong is not short of wine tasting courses, ranging from the basic to the advanced. Many people like to take one of two courses to give them a head start. WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust) is the biggest wine education provider in the world and has developed a series of qualifications for the wine trade and wine consumers. WSET pioneered the Systematic Tasting Approach, which is a good framework for wine appreciation. There are over 20 WSET providers in Hong Kong. There are also courses aimed at wine lovers with a less formal yet still structured approach. Whatever courses you might choose, it is important to learn from enthusiastic lecturers. While I don’t know all the wine lecturers in town, I do respect JC Viens and Ian Symonds. Not only are they professional, they are passionate, which I think is the essential attribute for a lecturer. Remember we all enjoyed our Mathematics or Chemistry at school more if the teachers were excited about the subject? Wine, likewise, is a subject that needs a passionate teacher or mentor to unlock its mysteries.

Nevertheless, attending wine courses is not mandatory to appreciate wine. All you need is confidence and trust in your palate. The BLIC quality formula will guide you through the maze. If you taste one grape variety or region a week from now, you will have tried 52 wines by  the end of the year. And you’ll appreciate wine a lot more than if you just guzzle 52 bottles over Christmas.

Abridged version was published in the South China Morning Post on 03 January 2013

O:TU - a combination of wine excellence and marketing discipline

The PR office of O:TU Wine has been trying to organising a tasting between me and their winemaker Jan Kux on and off for a year, and we finally met just a few weeks ago. At first, I thought Jan was just another high-flying businessman turned winemaker who preferred to spend more time in Europe and therefore had to use a PR office to organise his meetings. Our conversation changed my impression.

Yes, winemaking was a second thought for Jan—he studied law and languages originally before deciding to switch to winemaking. Since then, he has accumulated over 20 years experience working in wineries in Germany, Alsace and Bordeaux, to name a few. Apart from running O:TU, he is also a consultant to several wineries in Europe.

A jet-setter he may be, but Jan is certainly not pretentious. Otuwhero Estates, the former O:TU, went into receivership in 2008 and the new owners went to Jan seeking help reviving the business. Apart from making the wine, he is also hands on with the selling and marketing side. While he respects terroir—we did talk about the different kind of soils in the 200ha vineyard—he believes even more in communicating with customers. The packaging has to strike a chord with the target audience and at the same time reflect the wine.

The result is a bold yet understated label, a combination of classic European and modern styling. Jan makes three Sauvignon Blancs, each with a defined market. O:TU Sauvignon Blanc, with vibrant green lettering on the label, is created with the young woman in mind, light and refreshing with a touch of residual sugar, while the more complex blend:102 with riper fruit and warmer-toned packaging is aimed at the more experienced consumer. The latest blend: 202, still in barrel at the moment, is a robust, food-friendly wine and no doubt will have a label to match.

But O:TU is about more than labels. A striking label may help sell a wine once, but if you want repeat purchases it needs quality to back it up. O:TU certainly has the typical Marlborough tropical fruit aromas, but all the wines are aged on fine lees until bottling, giving that extra mouthfeel and complexity to subdue the pungency and add a touch of Old World character.

Some wine professionals dismiss packaging, averring that consumers should judge a wine solely by its content. However, with thousands of brands around, having both the label and the quality can give the edge. Jan’s winemaking philosophy is about beauty, art, culture and appreciation of nature combined with a scientific approach. I couldn't agree more with this.

All that sparkles is not Champagne

It’s that time of the year again when sales of bubbly are traditionally at their highest. Despite the doom and gloom of the economy, people, especially wine lovers, do like to indulge. However, enjoying bubbly does not need to break the bank. There are plenty of good quality sparkling wines outside Champagne that one can enjoy all year round.

Champagne is expensive for a few reasons. The first is production. Secondary fermentation, where the bubbles are created (called the Traditional Method), occurs in the same bottle. The wine is then aged on lees, a procedure called yeast autolysis, to develop the bready and biscuity notes. The longer this period is, the more pronounced the yeast autolysis characters. By law, non-vintage champagne has to be aged on lees for a minimum of 12 months and vintage champagne for at least 36 months (and often much longer). The second reason is climate. Champagne is in a marginal grape growing area where grapes, when fully ripen, can still retain high acidity—a prerequisite for good sparkling wine. And last but not least is marketing. Only sparkling wine produced within the Champagne region can be called Champagne, and this helps build the aura of exclusivity around it. A lot of sparkling wine outside Champagne is produced using the same Traditional Method but only costs a fraction of the price. Admittedly, a fine Champagne often has more finesse because of the marginal climate, complex blending and use of reserve wine, that set it apart from the rest, but one should not dismiss the other sparklers as lesser quality.

Crémant is another French sparkling wine outside Champagne. It is made by the traditional method, using whole bunch pressing with extraction limited to 100litres of juice from 150 kilograms of grapes—exactly the same stringent approach as in Champagne. The wine has to spend a minimum of nine months on lees and the grapes are generally the best from the region for making still wine (the permitted grapes for Champagne are Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir). Crémant de Loire is usually made from Chenin Blanc, or Pinot Noir; Crémant d’Alsace from Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and sometimes Riesling; Crémant Limoux, from the high altitude of Southern Languedoc, is made from Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay. Retail prices of Crémants are in the region of HK$200/bottle.

Most of us know Cava, a sparkling wine from Spain made in the traditional method with a minimum of nine months ageing on lees. Most Cava uses the indigenous grape varieties Xarel-lo, Parellada and Macabeo for whites, and Garnacha (Grenache) and Monastrel for rosés. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are also permitted. Cava has distinctive earthy notes (some say rubbery) because of the Xarel-lo. Most Cava is not for ageing, hence its modest price of just over HK$100/bottle. Segura Viudas Reserva Heredad, with up to four years on lees, is a steal at less than HK$200/bottle (Watson’s).

The New World, including Australia, New Zealand and the US, also produce good quality sparkling wine using Champagne grape varieties in the traditional method. The best comes from cooler regions of Tasmania, the Adelaide Hills, Marlborough and Carneros, all displaying riper fruit characters but a less defined structure than Champagne, but there are nevertheless some top quality New World sparkling wines that can rival Champagne. Cap Classique from South Africa uses mainly Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Chenin Blanc following the ‘champagne’ method. Serious Cap Classique producers are members of the Cap Classique Association and some are available in Hong Kong. And for something out of the mainstream, try Casa Valduga from Brazil (importer Wine Patio).

In my view, the two outstanding sparkling wines outside Champagne are English sparkling wine and Franciacorta DOCG from Italy. Both have the elegance and finesse of Champagne. Southern England has similar soil (chalk) to Champagne and climate change now enables England to ripen Champagne varieties reliably to make top quality sparkling wine. English sparkling wines are scooping awards in international competitions and have beaten Champagne in various blind tastings. The problem is quantity, as demand is outstripping supply. The few I have tried and like are Ridgeview and Camel Valley, both available in Hong Kong, plus Nyetimber and Bluebell (not yet in Hong Kong). Franciacorta, made with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Bianco, must be aged on lees for a minimum of 24 months for non-vintage and 36 months for vintage.

Sparkling wine can also be produced using the Charmat or Tank method, meaning secondary fermentation takes place in a pressurised tank rather than in bottle. Charmat method wine usually spends no or minimum time on lees so production cost is considerably reduced. This method is particularly suitable for aromatic grape varieties where wine reflects the varietal aromas rather then the yeast autolysis characters. These wines should be consumed young and fresh. The most popular in Hong Kong is the Italian Prosecco with fresh aromas of apple and melon. Priced at about HK$100+/bottle, it is definitely value for money, particularly the DOCG which is of better quality. Another is German Sekt, the best being made from Riesling, although some serious producers make it using the traditional method.

The rising stars among sparklers are Asti and Moscato d’Asti from Italy with only one fermentation. They are highly aromatic with lower alcohol (7-7.5% and 5%), medium sweetness and less pressure, popular among young consumers.

With so many choices and reasonable prices, bubblies do not need to be saved for celebrations only. Enjoy one now.


Abridged version was published in the South China Morning Post on 12th December 2012